EMPLOYMENT STABILIZATION INSIDE FIRMS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF WORKER COOPERATIVES

There is evidence that worker cooperatives provide a greater stabilization of employment compared to capital‐managed firms. While the reasons of this behaviour can be ascribed to their property and governance structure, less is known of the tools to put it into practice. I discuss two possible ways to guarantee employment insurance: by letting wages fluctuate, or by accumulating reinvested profits into an income stabilizing fund that copes with downturns without firing and without reducing wages. In this second case, I find out that asset locks play a wage smoothing role. This may explain the large share of profits that are reinvested in this indivisible and not appropriable fund. I provide evidence for this mechanism by means of original data at the firm level and of first‐hand collected survey data at the individual level on risk perception in a sample of Italian cooperatives.     

Coalition formation in general apex games under monotonic power indices

An apex game consists of one apex player and a set of minor players. We identify two key properties of apex games and use them to introduce the class of general apex games. We derive players' preferences over winning coalitions by applying strongly monotonic power indices on such a game and all its subgames and investigate whether there are core stable coalitions in the induced hedonic coalition formation game. Besides several general results, in particular, we develop conditions on the game for the Shapley–Shubik index, the Banzhaf index, and the normalized Banzhaf index.     

百色水利枢纽消力池底板抗浮稳定计算与分析

根据百色水利枢纽“表孔宽尾墩＋中孔跌流＋底流式消力池”联合消能工的特点,结合消力池地质条件的复杂性,利用消力池底板动水荷载模型试验成果,考虑止水失效工况,进行底板抗浮稳定计算和分析。     

Heterogeneity in Economics

This paper argues that heterogeneity of agents’ characteristics plays a fundamental role in the economy and should do so in economic models. Three aspects are considered. Firstly the notion that assuming heterogeneity was a solution to the problem posed by the results of Sonnenschein Mantel and Debreu is considered and it is suggested that the more pragmatic approach adopted by Hildenbrand is likely to be more productive. Next the role of adaptation and evolution which necessarily involve variety or heterogeneity is examined. It is suggested that heterogeneity will persist since agents will only slowly learn to adapt and that in the meantime the environment will change. Lastly the role of heterogeneity in financial markets is examined. It is suggested that heterogeneous and varying expectations may account for many of the stylised facts which do not seem to be consistent with the standard financial markets model.“Variety is the spice of life”     

资本市场开放与经济稳定增长—对东南亚国家的实证分析及其启示

20世纪90年代,国际资本的急剧流动引发了东南亚的金融危机。国际资本的短期性和投机性,以及它对发展中国家的资本市场、汇率、外汇储备和金融体系的强烈冲击,应当引起我们的深思。资本市场的开放,必须建立在国内金融体系的改革和实质经济市场化转型的基础上。     

基于金融稳定的货币政策框架修正研究

文章构造了一个四期二叉树模型,对货币稳定和金融稳定的关系进行了分析,发现仅以维护货币稳定为目标的货币政策无法同时实现金融稳定。基于此,文章对货币政策框架进行了修正,将货币稳定和金融稳定纳入统一的货币政策框架予以考察,并对我国货币政策的实践进行了实证分析。VAR检验结果表明,银行信贷增长率和房地产价格指数都是我国货币政策应当关注的金融稳定指标。货币政策应根据金融稳定指标进行逆周期调控,调控重点是金融稳定指标预期,而非稳定指标本身。     

Hedonic prices indexes for new passenger cars in Portugal (1997–2001)

This paper evaluates the effects of quality change on the price index for new passenger cars in Portugal for the years 1997–2001. Hedonic regression models are studied, giving particular emphasis to the relation between the form of the price index and the econometric techniques used for inference. The results of the empirical part of the paper indicate that during this period the changes in the quality of new cars sold in Portugal are responsible for price increases averaging 4.8% per year. Because this quality change was not entirely taken into account, in recent years the CPI component corresponding to the sales of new passenger cars may have been overestimated by as much as 2.2 percentage points per year. This corresponds to an overestimation of the overall CPI by about 0.15 percentage points per year.     

Fire sales by euro area banks and funds: What is their asset price impact?

The assets under management of investment funds have soared in recent years, triggering a debate on their possible implications for financial stability. We contribute to this debate assessing the asset price impact of fire sales in a novel partial equilibrium model of euro area funds and banks calibrated over the period between 2008 and 2017. An initial shock to yields causes funds to sell assets to address investor redemptions, while both banks and funds sell assets to keep their leverage constant. These fire sales generate second-round price effects. We find that the potential losses due to the price impact of fire sales have decreased over time for the system. The contribution of funds to this impact is lower than that of banks. However, funds’ relative contribution has risen due to their increased assets under management and banks’ lower leverage and rebalancing towards loans. Should this trend continue, funds will become an increasingly important source of systemic risk.     

收入差距、位置消费与社会稳定

适度、合理的收入差距,不仅是激励人们竞争,促进发展的重要务件,也是位置消费产生的基本条件;但过分悬殊的收入差距则不仅会影响人们的社会心理,不利于提高有效消费,而且可能产生畸形的位置消费行为,甚至会因此影响社会的稳定.在分析和研究目前收入分配问题时,应当从位置消费的新视角研究它们对社会稳定的影响.研究位置消费有利于我们从人们相互比较的满意度中观察改革的效果,权衡各项利弊得失,并及时地采取微调措施,尽可能地减少改革的摩擦和阻力.     

信用衍生品的信用风险转移对金融稳定性的影响

银行信用风险转移激励与监管当局提高金融稳定性的目标是一致的,监管当局应该通过鼓励金融机构之间的总信用风险转移,使得信用风险转移的收益最大化;研究还发现,随着跨部门之间信用风险转移的出现,为了使得个体激励与提高信用风险管理中金融机构稳定性的社会目标相一致,应该鼓励部门之间的差异化监管。